


When the Breeze is Clear

by trouvelle



Category: Naruto
Genre: Anthropomorphic, F/M, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Reincarnation, soft fantasy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-06
Updated: 2020-09-06
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:49:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26328931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trouvelle/pseuds/trouvelle
Summary: Tenten waits for Neji, like the wind that waits for the forest.
Relationships: Hyuuga Neji/Tenten
Kudos: 11





	When the Breeze is Clear

**Author's Note:**

> warnings: impermanent death
> 
> This is an experimental style and structure (basically everything) to me, and sweet thanks to Lu for looking over it! After years (has it been a decade? idk) of lurking in the beloved nejiten fandom and now I'm finally writing my first piece!~

There is a house at the edge of the forest where the wind whispers like words.

“Do you ever feel like you're not where you're supposed to be?” asks Neji. His fingertips, curled around rusting chains, are a faint blue. A sad breeze rocks the swing they’re sitting on.

“No,” Tenten says, beaming. Her eyes are shining radiantly. “I am supposed to be everywhere.”

Neji stares ahead, his gaze unwavering. Tenten thinks he looks lonely. “Perhaps you were the wrong person to ask.” His lips are turning blue, too, and a wind whistles through the treetops, sharp with sorrow.

—

Neji loves the forest, but dare not venture farther than where the light does not touch.

“I am not strong enough,” he says, a broad palm resting on the trunk of a grand old pine. “If I go in, I might never come back out.” He looks over his shoulder at Tenten, smiling wryly. “That's what the doctors say, anyway.”

Tenten thinks they're probably right. Dusk is falling in streaks of purple and Neji’s eyes are calm, like predictions of night illuminated by the moonlight. He reminds her of the elms on the western edge of the forest, ancient and proud, wiser than time.

“Will you get better?” she asks. Her scalp aches painfully, and she presses her fingers against the throbbing spot in silence before she is caught.

Neji takes her hand, turns back to the forest and doesn't answer.

—

The night was dark, the air was silent and the trees were still. Twin lights, brighter than stars, rise up before her. Tenten cannot move. Everything is sudden and foggy like a dream, or a memory from another life.

Neji is there, behind the lights, eyes wide and fearful, and Tenten can do nothing but stare back as the lights find her. Everything hurts her to the bone, and then nothing does as she scatters away and becomes one with the wind.

—

Tenten finds him far from home, halfway into the sky. The curtains billow as she slips into the room. Neji is lying on a bed, white and perfect and still, a water lily at the height of spring.

“Neji,” She whispers. Someone is crying. The universe holds its breath as Neji opens his eyes.

“Tenten?” he asks, voice gentle as the drift of autumn leaves. He sits up, and she can see straight through him to the wall behind.

“Come on,” she says, and holds out her hand. “We gotta go.”

Neji looks down at himself, still sleeping on the bed, for a long moment, then gingerly reaches out to take her hand. A sweet summer breeze dances through the room, and they slip out into the sky just as someone stands and closes the window behind them.

“You haven’t told me where we’re going,” Neji points out, as they drift on the wind. He is beautiful and pure, like the clear morning sky. 

“To the forest,” says Tenten, voice thick with eagerness and warmth, like the rays that follow the crack of dawn. She tightens her grip on his hand, tilts her face to the sun, and closes her eyes.

—

There is a house at the edge of the forest where the wind sings through the trees, as though it’s whistling a greeting to its best friend. The trees shake themselves in the sunlight and, smiling, murmur back the loveliest of harmonies.

**Author's Note:**

> Basically, Tenten was a deer that became as the spirit of the wind after Neji hit her with his car one night. He survived but was gravely injured, so he eventually dies and is became the spirit of the forest.


End file.
